Aviation Books

GSDpilot

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GSDpilot
Does anybody have any recommendations on good aviation books? I have read The Killing Zone, 81 lessons, a few Richard Collins and weather books. Any must-reads or particularly enjoyable books about aviation? I am looking to build a reading list for the winter months.
 
Robert Serling wrote some really good stuff. The Electra Story,(one of my favorites) When the Airlines went to War. That's the history of CRAF. And many others, both fiction and non fiction. I think there was already a thread on this someplace.
 
Thanks, I looked for a thread before posting. I will dig a bit deeper. Thanks for the input!
 
Song of The Sky by Guy Murchie (1954). Murchie was a private pilot and later a transoceanic navigator in WW2. He writes of history, navigation, weather, aerodynamics and the soul of flight, all with a poet's touch.

It's available on Kindle for 99 cents. Get it, read it.
 
Fate is the Hunter by Ernest K. Gann is an aviation classic

Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche is frequently mentioned as a "must read." After reading so many references about it, I bought it for myself. This will probably be heresy here, but I found it to be a tough slog...so much so, I finally gave up. What I did read was informative, but I just couldn't get into it once I was half way through the book.
 
The Right Stuff, A Gift of Wings, Flight of Passage. A more recent good read is Skyfaring, by Mark Vanhoenacker. Also, if you can find it, Bax Seat by longtime Flying magazine columnist Gordon Baxter.
 
Does anybody have any recommendations on good aviation books? I have read The Killing Zone, 81 lessons, a few Richard Collins and weather books. Any must-reads or particularly enjoyable books about aviation? I am looking to build a reading list for the winter months.

Someone will say Stick and Rudder. I don't know why some people love this book. My guess is that it is an antiquarian effect.
 
A Higher Call, by Adom Makos was a decent read.


If you suffer from insomnia, i have a couple ops manuals that work well.
 
Single-Pilot IFR Pro Tips, by Gary Reeves is pretty good if your into IFR flying.
 
Try something different for a change, 'Sigh for a Merlin' and 'Flight of the Mew Gull' both by Alex Henshaw.
Alex was a British race pilot in the 1930's and a company test pilot for Supermarine during WWII.
The second story is about his racing and a record setting flight from London to Cape Town South Africa and return. He flew his modified Percival Mew Gull G-AEXF, 12,754 miles, 40 hours down and 39 hours and 36 minutes back in 4 days 10 hours and 16 minutes. His plane is part of the Shuttleworth Collection.
'Sigh For a Merlin' is the story of test flying all the different Spitfire models for Supermarine, making sure they were safe and performed as they should before turning them over to Squadrons.
Both excellent stories.
 
Unforgettable: My 10 Favorite Flights by Lane Wallace is pretty good, especially the story about a blimp flight over Italy and the one about flying in the U2.

Frank Smith's books are dated but good. Check out Weekend Pilot.
 
Frank Smith's books are dated but good. Check out Weekend Pilot.
I found Weekend Pilot in my high school's library in 1964. More than any other single book it inspired me to learn to fly. I like Smith's whimsical writing style, which carried though several more books and his monthly column in Flying magazine. He became a leading spokesman and advocate for general aviation in Washington DC. Weekend Pilot is dated now (1957), but much of it is universal about learning to fly, and the rest is an interesting glimpse of general aviation and ATC in the mid 1950s.
 
Unforgettable: My 10 Favorite Flights by Lane Wallace is pretty good, especially the story about a blimp flight over Italy and the one about flying in the U2.

Frank Smith's books are dated but good. Check out Weekend Pilot.

Weekend Pilot is the book that got me interested in learning to fly back in 1973. I read all three of his books.

Another book I found interesting is I’ll Take the 18. Stories about flying the Beech 18 from a nighttime freight dog.
 
This is a list I compiled awhile ago of some of what's on my bookshelf, in no particular order:

Anything early (Stranger to the Ground, Biplane, Nothing by Chance, A Gift of Wings) by Richard Bach, before he got all New Agey weird and stopped writing about airplanes (though Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions and the much later Travels With Puff are fun reads if you don't take them seriously).

Anything from Ernest K. Gann. Most of his stuff is about the years around WWII, but 'Gentlemen of Adventure' is about some WWI pilots and their lives in later years.

Any of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's flying stories (some of the best, but I really have to be in the mood for his writing style).

Flight of Passage by Rinker Buck, two kids fly a Cub across the US in the early 1960s.

The Cannibal Queen, about flying a Stearman around the US, and Flight of the Intruder (a Vietnam tale) by Stephen Coonts.

The Air Devils by Don Dwiggins (the story of the early barnstormers).

Slide Rule by Neville Shute.

WWII:
Reach For the Sky by Paul Brickhill (the story of Douglas Bader, the legless Battle of Britian ace).

Fly For Your Life by Larry Forrester (the story of Bob Tuck, another Battle of Britian pilot... Tuck and Bader did not like each other).

The Look of Eagles by John Godfrey, an American fighter pilot.

Serenade to the Big Bird by Bert Stiles, a B-17 pilot.

Ultralights/microlights:
On a Wing and a Prayer by Colin MacKinnon, a Scotsman flying an ultralight across the southern US.

Global Flyer by Brian Milton, who flew a microlight around the world, more or less... he comes across as kind of a jerk, but it's an interesting read.

Propellerhead by Anthony Woodward, who decides to learn to fly to impress girls. This one alternates between "what an idiot" and "yeah, well, I did that too."

Flying With Condors by Judy Leden.

Marooned by Martin Cadin is a fictional pre-Apollo novel about spaceflight, but has a great chapter about an 1960s USAF pilot taught to fly a Stearman by an old curmudgeon of an instructor.

Flight to Freedom by Michael Donnet. True story about a Belgian Air Force pilot stuck in occupied Belgium after Germany invaded finds a derelict Stampe biplane in a barn, fixes it up in secret, and flies to England.

Voyager by Jeanna Yeager and Dick Rutan, about the round the world flight.

Yeager, the autobiography, and Forever Flying, about Bob Hoover. Two contemporaries with very different personalities.

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. Much better than the movie.

Rickenbacker, the autobiography.

The Spirit of Saint Louis by Charles Lindbergh.

Listen! The Wind by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

A Rabbit in the Air and The Grashoppers Come by David Garnett, about British sport flying in the 1930s.

Every pilot knows about (and should read) Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langeweische, but his lesser known works (A Flier's World, I'll Take the High Road, and Lightplane Flying are all worth reading, if dated.

Duane Cole's Happy Flying, Safely (also dated, but some of us fly dated airplanes). And of course his aerobatics books if you're into that.
 
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Weekend Pilot is the book that got me interested in learning to fly back in 1973. I read all three of his books.
There's actually a fourth autobiographical book -- Weekend Wings (1982), which I discovered just recently. It summarizes Smith's earlier flying career as described in the first three books, then tells of his despair after crashing his Apache on the beach at Ocean City after an engine failure on takeoff. With his son's encouragement he got back in the saddle with a new Cherokee Six, and eventually downsized to a more economical Cherokee 140.
 
"Moondog's Academy of the Air and Other Disasters" by Peter Fusco is funny enough to bring tears to your eyes. In addition to being hilarious it's a view into the underside of the aviation world. In the same vein, "Hauling Checks" by Alex Stone is good but not as funny.
 
A friend lent me a book some decades ago. War Birds, Diary of an Unknown Aviator. It was a dairy kept by a pilot who volunteered in 1917, sailed to Europe, taught to fly by the French and brits and served with the A.E.F. until he died. A squadron mate published it in the 20's without naming him. The publisher titled it WAR BIRDS. Corney. The squadron mate, Elliott White Springs of Fort Mills, S.C. republished it with the current title.

The accounts of carousing all night, showing up at the flight line pre dawn, tossing their empty bottles over the fence and manning their planes for the dawn patrol. The patrols were carried out at 20,000' behind engines that were spewing castor oil lube in their faces. And I thought my tour in VN was something to talk about.

I re read it several times before returning it to my pal. He shared some letters that he received from Springs. Springs was still alive in the 70's and running the family cotton farm in SC. About 15 years ago, I needed another "fix." Its been out of print for ever. I did find a used copy (1 of 5) on Amazon. Five bucks. It's in fair condition and has gift sign off in the front cover dated Dec 1930. The letters from Springs are a whole other story.
 
A friend lent me a book some decades ago. War Birds, Diary of an Unknown Aviator. It was a dairy kept by a pilot who volunteered in 1917

I found it as a free ebook on archive.org
 
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